NU prof honored for help to jailed

Classes worked to free innocent from Death Row

December 04, 2003|By John Biemer, Tribune staff reporter.

David Protess and his dogged students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism have helped establish the innocence of eight prisoners wrongfully convicted of murder that led to the moratorium on the death penalty imposed by former Gov. George Ryan in 2000.

With the help of a $100,000 prize Protess will receive Thursday, he can focus more on helping such individuals make the difficult transition to life once they're on the other side of the bars.

"Most of these men have been wrongly kept in a cage for many years where they've experienced pent-up rage for being unjustifiably confined, and they've often lost their youth," Protess said.

On Thursday, Protess is scheduled to receive the Puffin/Nation prize for Creative Citizenship, given jointly by the Puffin Foundation Ltd. of New Jersey and the Nation Institute, the New York City-based foundation started by the owners of The Nation, a liberal magazine. It's intended to recognize Americans who challenge the status quo "through distinctive, courageous, imaginative, socially responsible work of significance."

"The work that [Protess] and his colleagues have done has permanently altered our national conception of our system of justice," said Hamilton Fish, president of the Nation Institute. Protess' work "led to and coincided with an unprecedented upheaval in this arena," Fish said, and has powerful resonance at a time when the country, and individual states, are debating the merits of the death penalty.

The cases that Protess, his students, pro bono lawyers and private investigators have investigated over the last 12 years--including those of the Ford Heights Four, Anthony Porter and Aaron Patterson--inspired headlines and policy change, while garnering international attention.

"I think basically I'm an educator who tries to teach young journalists," said Protess, the director of Medill's Innocence Project. "A few times we've gotten lucky and had an impact."

Patterson, set free 11 months ago, said the award is going to the right person.

"That guy shamed the whole system," Patterson said. "I hope they give him more awards. He's definitely going straight to heaven. He's like a warrior, he's saved so many lives."

Protess said he plans to use the money in part to make his campaign to exonerate the wrongfully convicted more national in scope, as well as to establish a program to help those who have been freed from prison adjust to their new life.

The program will be named for Dennis Williams, one of four men who spent a combined total of 65 years in prison in a highly publicized 1978 rape and murder of a young woman. The four were cleared in 1996 after DNA tests, as well as an investigation by Protess' students which turned up a "street file" citing the names and details an informant gave police 18 years earlier, exonerated them.

In 1997 the DNA evidence led to the conviction of three other men. A fourth suspect had died. Williams himself died in March at age 46.

Protess said exonerated ex-prisoners universally have problems adjusting to life outside prison. The money in the new program would be used to cover needs, including psychological counseling, job training, job-finding, medical needs and networking with other ex-prisoners who have faced similar ordeals.

Although some exonerated former prisoners eventually receive lucrative civil rights settlements years after they've been released--the Ford Heights Four won a record $36 million--others do not. State compensation payments, sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars, take several months or even years to win approval from a seven-judge panel and the state legislature.

When exonerated inmates try to get jobs after years in prison, Protess said, they often find they have fallen behind the times and don't have the skills to compete in the job market. They also have to fight perceptions.

"Potential employers often will view them as having a big `X' on their backs as ex-cons," Protess said. Past winners of the Puffin/Nation prize are Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union with Cesar Chavez, and Robert Moses, a civil rights leader who founded the Algebra Project, a national program to help low-income and minority students improve their mathematical skills.